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Esteban Hernandez, Evan Lips and Tom Renner have joined the newsroom staff of Digital First Media in Connecticut.

Evan Lips

Hernandez and Lips have been hired as staff reporters at The Register Citizen in Torrington and the New Haven Register, respectively. Renner has been hired as a deputy sports editor in New Haven.

Lips, a Connecticut native, previously worked as a reporter at a DFM sister paper, the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts. He got to know the New Haven newsroom in December when he was part of a team of DFM journalists who came to help the Register cover the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Within hours on his first day as a Register reporter on April 15, he was sent in the other direction as part of a DFM team headed to Massachusetts to cover the bombing of the Boston Marathon. His first week was spent working with his former Lowell colleagues and a team from New Haven that fed news of the bombing’s aftermath to Digital First Media’s 75 daily newspapers across the country.

Lips holds a bachelor’s degree from Kenyon University and a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University. He will cover East Haven for the Register. Email him at elips@nhregister.com. Follow him on Twitter @evanmlips.

Esteban Hernandez

Hernandez also worked for a DFM sister paper, as an intern at the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado, before relocating to Connecticut to work at The Register Citizen.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he worked as an editor on the staff of the CU Independent. Email him at ehernandez@registercitizen.com. Follow him on Twitter @estebanHRZ.

Renner starts work today as deputy sports editor at the New Haven Register.

He has worked the past three years as Fairfield County sports editor for the online local news site The Daily Voice, formerly known as Main Street Connect.

Previously, he worked for 22 years at the Stamford Advocate, leaving in 2009 as sports editor.

Tom Renner

Renner holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Temple University and has won numerous awards for sports writing, page design and overall sports section leadership from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists, New England Press Association and Associated Press Sports Editors.

Matt DeRienzo is group editor of Digital First Media's publications in Connecticut, including the New Haven Register, Middletown Press, The Register Citizen of Torrington and non-daily publications including Connecticut Magazine, the Litchfield County Times and West Hartford News. Contact him at mderienzo@21st-centurymedia.com.